1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bending control device for controlling bending of a bending portion provided at an insertion portion of an endoscope inserted into a body cavity.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, an endoscope has been widely employed in the medical field and others. At an insertion portion of the endoscope, a bending portion is provided in the vicinity of the base end of the distal end of the insertion portion so as to facilitate smooth insertion even into a bent body cavity. And when a direction to bend the bending portion is to be operated, an operator performs bending-operation of a bending operation knob provided at an operation portion or the like or a joystick or the like in case of an electrically bending endoscope disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-245246.
In a conventional example, when the bending portion is to be bent, it is carried out according to an observation result of an endoscopic image captured by an image pickup device or the like provided at the distal end portion of the insertion portion. That is, the direction to bend the bending portion is determined depending on the direction where an image portion showing a lumen portion such as a digestive duct exists in the endoscopic image.
The image pickup device is mounted at the distal end portion in a predetermined direction, and when the endoscopic image captured by the image pickup device is to be displayed on display means such as a monitor, the up direction of the endoscopic image matches the up direction in the vertical and horizontal directions of the bending portion.
Therefore, the direction to bend the bending portion is determined by checking in which direction in the up, down, right and left directions an image portion where a lumen portion is displayed dark is located in the endoscopic image.
On the other hand, in order to insert the insertion portion of the endoscope more smoothly, an insertion shape of the insertion portion inserted into the body cavity may be displayed.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-79087, for example, discloses an endoscope system showing an endoscopic image and the insertion shape.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-79087 discloses the endoscopic image and the image of the insertion shape, but in this conventional example, the bending operation is made on the basis of an endoscopic image when bending the bending portion, and the image of the insertion shape is used only as its supplementary image.
In the meantime, when the direction of a lumen is not known in the endoscopic image, it would be very convenient if bending operation and controlling bending of the bending portion according to the bending operation can be made on the basis of the image of the insertion portion or other displayed images, which facilitates insertion work and the like.